Stigma
by Illulian
Summary: What if Elena never joined the Turks? What if she became a doctor instead? Set during Meteorfall, Elena meets Rufus Tseng Reno and Rude in the ensuing chaos, and joins forces when a deadly new disease threatens humankind. AU Elena/Rufus, mild Elena/Tseng
1. Prologue: Oblivion

_**Author's Notes:**_

Story: [AU] Instead of following her sister into the Turks, Elena never got over her dislike of them, and rebelled to become a doctor instead. Treating the wounded, while surviving the post-apocalyptic chaos that is Midgar after the summoning of _Meteor_, Elena faces a vexing new enemy; Geostigma, a fatal disease that threatens the very future of humanity, as well as the foundations of what little hope remains left. Yet all is not lost, there is of course a chance meeting; the outcomes of which could change everything!

Pairing: Elena/Rufus but yeah, I figured I'd throw some mild Tseng into the equation as well. Got to admit confusing Elena with choices is fun. _Haha- is evil_ _=D_

Rating: T for language, bloody _imaginative_ imagery _(ha ha ha)_ and gore _(she is a doctor_). Will probably up it to M later on when there's some you-know-hur-hrm action (^__^) _Heck yeah! _

Timeline: From _Meteorfall _in FFVII onwards.

**Disclaimers: **If I owned it, it would have been x-rated.

Also, a quick shout out to _Milvus_ who inspired the pairing for this fic. _(If you like ElenaxRufus, go read her fic!)_ This is also my first fic so let me know what you think yo!

Enjoy! ^__^

-Blooming D.  
°‥.゜ 。゜・。*゜:゜

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_Ϛ_

_Prologue_

**Oblivion**

_It was pitch black, and he couldn't move. He had woken in agony to the most painful headache he could remember. The irony of course was that he couldn't remember much, if anything at all. He couldn't remember what he had been doing the moment it all went black, just that it was extremely urgent. He couldn't remember why it been so critical, just that it was something he was adamant on succeeding in. More importantly, he could not remember who he was. What was his name? The only thing he knew was that he was not someone to be left alone, trapped in the dark, and in pain. It was outrageous; it was incredulous; it was disconcerting. And although he would never admit to it, in the farthest reaches of his mind, the doubt that lingered grew; it was frightening._

_He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Dust whipped into the into the air, blurring his already limited vision. He could feel the smog filled sky as it enclosed in on him. Damn it was cold! The roof of his dwellings was long gone, virtually non-existent, unless you counted the countless, thin steel rods that jutted out of the wall. They hinged at unnatural angles with debris dripping from their ends, eerily swaying in the fog. A breath he exhaled mingled with the outside air, and he could see the angry wind currents that billowed and moaned thousands of feet up above the plate of the city. His city._

_His eyes wandered as he took in his surroundings. He was encased somewhere between rubble, and what looked like the faint silhouette of a bookcase. Ah. So that was why his legs hurt so damn much. It appeared that the bookcase had shielded the upper half of his body from most of the slabs of concrete when things came crashing inward. His lower half was less fortunate. Yet the mind numbing pain that emanated from bellow his waist was alarmingly reassuring. He could feel his legs. The awkward way his right ankle twisted to the side, the broken way his left leg was crushed forward. He could feel them; the sharp pain that shot from the lower base of his spine through to the temples of his skull, and back down through his calves again. The feeling was met with a grateful sigh of relief. In his situation, if he could feel his legs, that was a good thing. _

_There was no way he was getting out of this somewhat picky predicament alone. How long had he been waiting like this? How long had he been in the dark? Why did he wake up here in the first place?! This was ridiculous, "they" should have been here hours ago! Whoever "they" were._

_Thinking again of his situation, it was then that it occurred to him that which ever way he may attempt to move, he risked an avalanche of impending debris residing on the bookshelf's upturned base. This needed to be thought through meticulously, and as the mountain of rubble looked less than unstable in the unruly wind, quite quickly too. With his left hand, he inched his fingers up slowly, testing their freedom of movement. He twisted his wrist, and the pressure gave. It worked! Well, of course it worked. If it was his doing there should be no reason to suspect otherwise, there should be no reason to doubt. _

_The space around his hand grew as he compacted the surrounding debris, stabilizing the rubble near his wrist so as not to let anything trigger a small cave in, letting loose a larger one later on. Working his way up his arm, he freed his shoulder, neck and forehead. There were two inches of space to squeeze his bruised and gashed arm across his blooded and mutilated body. Looking across, one could find no trace of such wounds on his now dirtied white suit, but he could feel it otherwise. His body was broken, bones were stick out at odd places, poking holes where they shouldn't be. His thick black undercoat simply hid it all. Built to stop anything from coming in, instead, it was preventing all from leaking out. The warm red mess, that smelled of rotting flesh, stuck his undershirt to his body like an eighth layer of skin. _

_Blackness took hold of him, the dizziness that lingered in the shadows of his mind had found him at last. He couldn't see anymore, it was now or never. He slowly inched his free hand across his side to release his other imprisoned limb. Yet something atop the bookcase that shouldn't have moved shifted. A sharp pain pinned his now broken arm to his ribcage, and reverberated through to the frontal lobe of his brain. A mass of weight that had been lying on top of the pile now resided on his chest. It had rolled down to comfort him with it's presence, taking the wind out of him; choking his breathing in the process. The bitter taste of defeat in his mouth reached it's climax as he coughed up blood. _

_This was it. No sudden rescue, no chance of freedom. He knew the moment was inevitable, oblivion always was. He was going die, here and now. The fleeting gasps of his breath, with subtle irony, mirrored his constant desire to grasp what he most wanted, no matter the cost, yet always fail to quite fully achieve. Was it always like this? Always grasping but never catching hold? Always so close to his goals, his targeted destination, but never quite there?_

_As he took his final breaths the blackness that consumed him faded. He saw faint outlines of the smog filled sky in colors unknown to livingkind. Things were clearer now, clearer than they'd ever been. How he wished he'd seen more of this before. Like a child, he looked at the previously mundane world with a renewed sense of fascination; the colors of life danced on the event horizon of dreams. _

_Everything went white. _

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**End Note:**

The author here is a natural born slacker, and needs author food to motivate her along. Please be nice and feed the author. Review! *Zack's puppy eyes*


	2. Chapter 1: Endgame

_A/N This chap is where we're introduced to Elena. If she seems a little ooc, thats because technically she is. Just know I tried to keep her in character as far as reacting to differences in Before Crisis go. _

_Also, kudos to __**fetherhd**__,__**Doctor Kiba**__, __**ViviMouse**__, __**Flutist Girl**__, __**Katreda**_, _**FinalParadox**_ _and__** Milvus**__ for reviewing the previous chap. And extra kudos to __**Milvus**__ for getting my lazy butt back on track. You're all great motivators. Thanks yo! _(^__^)

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_Chapter 1_

**Endgame**

Elena pressed her fingers through her hair to massage her temples slowly. The ringing in her ears was not going away. She could hardly suppress a smirk as she reflected dismally on the day's events. It really couldn't have gotten worse, and then it did.

Out of habit, Elena's hand slid across her body to clasp her elbow. She breathed out lightly as she sat leaning back against the wall: her head resting into the frame of the windowsill, her eyes staring up at the smog filled sky.

The first year on the job was not what she expected. Yes, she knew about the pressures of last minute decisions, the stress that came with the 36 hour shifts, the lingering scent of Hi-Potion that wouldn't go away; no matter how many times you tried to wash your hands. Yes, she knew about them all, but they weren't the aspects of the job that were currently getting to her.

Elena closed her eyes.

The boy was going to die, Elena was sure of it.

Admitted a good 2 hours previously, he had unnoticed, internal lacerations from his abdomen through to his upper torso. Some idiot "Mage" wannabe had cast Cure before the Emergency Crew had arrived to retrieve the survivor. It effectively sealed the open wound shut, along with everything inside of it.

It was Tsai who had first suspected that something was off. She'd received Professor Rayliegh's permission previously to observe stable patients; running side MDI scans for her thesis while the others worked. She had added the boy unlogged to her last round and her suspicions were proven justified.

Elena attributed the hunch to the well known axiom of Wutaian Intuition. Tsai just called it being observative and thorough.

The MDI scan had shown multiple foreign objects, most likely shrapnel, embedded in the child's internal organs and muscular tissue. Apart from the multiple potions Tsai and Elena had been slipping into his IV, the only thing keeping the kid alive was pure dumb luck. Although, Elena had to admit, his luck was running thin if not completely out already.

When he entered the Sector 5 hospice, his death sentence had effectively been served to him on his ID Swipe and Blood Scan. No career-respecting doctor who worked for Shin-Ra, and who actually wanted to get somewhere, was going to bother checking up on the newly orphaned kid from Sector 8. His blood even had trace amounts of Mako, which meant his mother had most likely been a suburbanite junkie.

Definitely no-ones idea of a promotion or pay-raise. The doctor on duty had stuck to the basics, no RDU imaging or time-consuming Stasis test. Just a quick potion and an even quicker note on the Net-board for someone to contact child services so the kid could stop taking up a bed.

It wasn't always like this. The flow of the ER depended mostly on the doctor taking the head-shift duty at the time. Patients that enter during the period are under that head-doctor's oversight for the remainder of their stay. It was an old administrative system that was suppose to be efficient and cost-effective, although some, such as Tsai and Elena, thought it tiresome and unfair.

It was perfectly reasonable for patients to have the right to request a change of doctor if they felt under-treated. Unfortunately, for many of the current patients deemed inconvenient by their doctors, they were put to sleep upon arrival. Supposedly to save time on their diagnosis exam, but really to silence any unwanted questions or requests.

The system had lead to many patients having doctors not truly caring for them, and it wasn't as if other observing doctors could legally say or do anything without repercussions. Such interference would be a violation of the doctor-patient privilege, an infringement of a co-worker's profession, a question of a colleague's academic integrity, as well as a serious allegation that, if proved false, could have one barred from practice for life.

Lamentably for Elena, the boy had been the last straw, she had opened that big fat mouth that was hers and let all of Bahamut's fury loose. She really knew how to put her foot in it.

Elena had been given a 30 minute timeout while her career was gleefully scrutinized by her superiors, most of whom didn't respect her much. It didn't help that the doctor she called under question was the star apprentice of a superior as well, one that happened to respect her the least.

Professor Steinman was a puritan for social hierarchy. Under his shift one's Sector dictated one's lineage, one's lineage dictated one's social caste, and one's social caste dictated one's academic standing and social graces. If someone was from sector 6 and below, Professor Steinman made a point not to even acknowledge their existence.

Under his shift, even considering someone who came from the slums to be a doctor was a joke, and one in poor taste at that. Yet wallowing in the ridiculousness of Sector snobbery was futile. Elena was going to being written up for false accusations of dereliction of duty for sure.

If that wasn't enough, while fidgeting nervously and waiting to be called into the office for further questioning, Elena had noticed the member from child services show up to take the kid.

It really was all going to Ifrit's Hell!

Elena sighed.

_I can do this! _

She had the experience; the know-how! Elena bit her lip. As an Apprentice for the Sector 8 Field-Medic Response Unit, she was one of the first at ground zero when Sector 7 fell. Despite her slum beginnings, for the last six months she'd risen promptly through the ranks due to her innate ability to make well-formed snap decisions under treacherous circumstances.

A valuable skill, which more than compensated for her lack of talent in normal day-to-day decision making in general, or more importantly, when it came to casting basic healing spells. Materia was not her forté in the White Arts, so to speak. However, her unshakable drive to prove herself as an equal member of the team had strengthened her resolve to adapt her more truculent talents to suit her new chosen profession; she was good with a blade, so she had used it to become surgeon, and a damn good one at that!

She more than anyone knew how to stand firm when times were... unrelentingly vengeful?

Elena sighed deeper this time.

_I survived the slums by myself for Shiva's sake!_

Still, the images of the last week replayed in her mind. The frequent and uncountable losses. The sound of blood squelching across the floor through the mindless footsteps of panic. The frozen expressions of despair as people realized the inevitable.

She opened her eyes, half turning towards the window as she gazed across the carelessly littered foyer below. The winds outside were getting stronger. Along the roadway streetlights flickered, haphazardly bent to the side. Twisted billboard frames and small vehicles were knocked over, wrecked and abandoned.

Elena remembered, quite vividly, the blackened clouds that rumbled with impending doom. She had watched the scenery of the gray city street from her apartment as the looming, eerie light cast down fear instead of shadows. She shivered as she recalled first looking up to see the great black bringer of death; it's red glow the color of blood.

_Meteor_.

At it's appearance anxiety simmered while hysteria brewed; the cracks in society bubbled near the surface as the city slowly came to a boil.

As usual Shin-Ra extended an in iron grip on the minds of Midgar's population. SPB, the one-and-only Shin-Ra Public Broadcasting channel, had the propaganda crew working overtime. Everything was fine, there was nothing to worry about. Shin-Ra was in control of the situation.

They had even managed to capture two of the mass-murdering ecoTerrorists behind the death of President Shinra, the Sector 7 atrocities, and the summoning of Meteor.

Elena, like many who saw the Net-board uplink images of the two outlaws, was skeptical, but had watched the live televised broadcast of the event in Junon. It's timing couldn't have been worse. AVALANCHE, the terrorist group, had interrupted what was suppose to be an execution.

Elena had to admit she was more suspicious than surprised.

In her experience, one didn't exactly expect cold-blooded and insane fanatics to be mindful or caring enough to stage a rescue mission. Her experience being the kind one counted on more than most. There were many things in her past that Elena was not proud of, and getting kidnapped by AVALANCHE while still an Elite student at the Shinra Military Academy was by far one of her greatest irks.

It had been more than two years since her fateful run in with the infamous group. As luck would have it, she had became an inconvenient witness to AVALANCHE's handiwork in the making. However, the rare insight had proved far more valuable to her now than at the time of the experience.

She knew for a fact that they were not to be taken lightly. By Turk standards, they were the ideological nuisance that posed the greatest threat to Shin-Ra's ambitions. They were not the kind that were easily bought, manipulated, or taken care of by Shin-Ra's Investigative Division of General Affairs.

To be frank, those who made up AVALANCHE were blinded sadists who cared nothing for the means of how they attained their goals, gladly sacrificing all, including their own if needed.

Elena had witnessed it, she'd seen it first hand and it had changed her. However, when the two terrorists were publicly identified, Elena had to do a mental double take when she viewed their profiles.

Was Shin-Ra serious?!

One looked like an obnoxiously loud thug, only brooding rather unsuccessfully, and the other looked like a genteel small-town lass, only well endowed enough to pass for the Midgar trash you'd find Don Corneo hiring in the slums of Sector 6.

Neither looked capable for the complexity of carnage that Midgar had endured. How both could even possibly be considered to be members of AVALANCHE, Elena had no clue. Yet with years of training and family relations to go by, Elena knew that a Turk's judgment was far from mediocre. If they took them seriously, there was a definite reason why.

The pieces of the AVALANCHE puzzle just didn't add up. Things had definitely changed. The group Elena witnessed had wanted to end Shin-Ra due to the crackpot notion that it would save the world.

Now they just wanted to end the world.

Of course the new President Shinra hadn't let something like that get in the way. Shin-Ra had had their most powerful weapon moved to Midgar: the Sister Ray. It was so ridiculously huge that it spanned the length of an entire Sector.

Shin-Ra would not tolerate terrorism, nor would they negotiate with terrorists. The Sister Ray's installation was not just to defend Midgar from the havoc that AVALANCHE had unleashed, but also to take the lead and strike a massive blow to the defenses at their base to the north.

The new president was just as ambitious as his father. Actually, he was worse. Overseeing the Executive Counsel, he had made certain the Sister Ray's looming presence was attached to Shin-Ra Tower in Sector 0, with the controls in Sector 8. It was to be connected so everyone could see it fired at full Mako capacity. Everyone should see it! Shin-Ra was far greater than a group of petty Gaia-loving fanatics!

The young president did need to boost his image after all.

"_...Dr. McKenna..."_

Lack of confidence in Shin-Ra as a whole had grown drastically when Meteor appeared, but truth be told, their roots could be found when Sector 7 fell, while the elder was president. At that point AVALANCHE lost all credibility with any supporters. Shin-Ra won them over, but the old President had a lot to account for.

He was charged with the greatest military might in all of Gaia, how could he have let something like that happen? An entire Sector of the Great Plate of Midgar collapsed. It was a technological marvel. It was thought to be impenetrable, but it crumbled. Now with Meteor, could the city Shin-Ra built really stand firm? The new president was determined to prove that it was.

"_...Dr. McKenna..."_

When the monster AVALANCHE sent to destroy Midgar finally came, everyone in Sector 0 felt the plateground rumble as the Mako flow from all of Midgar's seven remaining Reactors were rerouted to power the weapon's generator. As the weapon was fired, everybody on top of the Plate watched as the glow from it's beam lightened the sky to a forgotten shade of blue, once remembered. And as the weapon powered down, every soul in Midgar held their breath as the monster fired back. It all went so horribly wrong! The rock and foundation of Shin-Ra's mighty empire was dead. Net-board uplinks documented in full frenzy the top floor of Shin-Ra Tower: Completely Obliterated! Any life that existed there: Gone! Flash mobs of hysteria echoed throughout the population as Midgar descended into mayhem.

This was it after all, this was the end of all things.

_Endgame._

"Dr. McKenna!"

Elena snapped to attention. She rushed to sit up, only to cringe internally. She should really be used to being called that by now.

"You know, it's been five minutes since they've called for you. Are you really in a position to keep them waiting?"

She felt her stomach clench as she looked up to see the confident sneer on the very face of the doctor who was responsible for ruining her day. The bane of her future career, the doctor Elena had witnessed jeopardizing the life of a patient through his own thoughtless bias, Dr Horatio C. Wainright III.

_If they called for me, I would have been notified._

He was mocking her! The snidely accented drawl of his speech had betrayed his upbringing. He was born and raised in Sector 3, the son of the chief medical executive for the Mako Research Institute, a subsidiary of the Shin-Ra Medical Administration . He had the perfect future up the Shin-Ra ladder laid out for him.

_Why he decided to study Field-medicine instead of Mako-research at the Institute, Minerva only knows!_

Still, regardless of his decision to associate with the "lesser" classes of Sector 5, Elena knew replying to a conceited third generation member of the corporate aristocracy was meaningless. In his mind he had already won and was just lauding in her face. Elena smiled, she stood up slowly, and her mouth spoke out before she could stop it.

"Why Dr Wainright, I was merely recounting your actions, and noticed how kind it was of you to leave such an obvious uplink trail on the Net-boards for me."

She'd mimicked his speech pattern perfectly. It wasn't anything personal, but Elena's mouth just had a thing for getting the last word in anyways. Sometimes she though it did it just to annoy her.

"Whatever you say..." Dr Wainright whispered, leaning into her ear. "...Slum-Mage."

Elena's expression froze in shock.

_S..Slum-Mage?! _

Her eyes iced over as her blood began to boil. Her mouth was ready to match the incredulity of her outrage, but luckily this time she managed to regain control. She wasn't about to give him the benefit of knowing he'd gotten under her skin.

Unfortunately Dr Wainright didn't miss the subtle anger at his insult in her eyes, and his sneer turned into an expression of smug indifference. She knew her case against him could be dismissed as trivial. The evidence was dirt when compared to his word to some of those who she was going to be answering to.

Some of her superiors were going to petition to bar her from practicing for sure, or at least fire her from the current Hospice she'd worked so hard to get into. Elena hoped that the uplink evidence and Tsai's side MDI scans would be enough to convince a few of her superiors that Dr Wainright had acted in willful negligence of a patient in his charge.

It wasn't as if it would do much to his career, he really had nothing to worry about. Even if she could convince her superiors of the charge against Dr Wainright, maybe, just maybe, he'd receive a slap on the wrists with a weeks probation. After all, everyone makes "mistakes", an err in judgment is not uncommon in the practice, and it would be a shame to charge such an up-and-coming star like Dr Horatio C. Wainright III.

In short, it wasn't what you knew, but who you knew.

Elena clenched her fists in frustration, but before she could contemplate more on the legalities of academic bureaucracy, or brood on the possibility of her career's ultimate demise, Dr Wainright had turned to face the door.

As if by reading his mind, the doors of the office opened as Professor Steinman stepped out into the walkway. He faced his star pupil with an all knowing smile, gradually turning to face Elena. His smile changed to a snide grin as he assessed her up and down as if to acknowledge seeing her for the first time, and that he was pleased by what he saw.

Elena shivered, something about being under the evaluating gaze of Professor Steinman made her uncomfortable. Her sixth sense was telling her something was off, and it was right. Not five seconds later did she notice that her other superiors were leaving! After discussing her past credentials and the charges laid before them, they weren't staying to question her or hear her speak.

Elena opened her mouth as if to protest, but the words weren't coming out. Professor Steinman's grin didn't change when, in a gesture mocking sincerity, he waved his hand to show Elena inside. As the dawning realization hit, Elena's sense of trepidation went into overdrive.

He was going to be questioning her alone!

As she walked into the office, she felt foolish for even believing that there was hope in her case not being doomed from the very start. She was dead-meat. Why did she have to open her big mouth to begin with anyway?!

_This day just keeps on getting worse.  
_

She held her breath as she heard the doors close behind her.

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_E/N: Yey! I finished the first chap *huzzah!* Now to do some Work work *ugh* __ So much to do.... so little motivation to do it... _(=__=)


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